South Norwalk

E was anxious to get out of town last weekend, so we headed to South Norwalk. P slept on the way to Grand Central (he's sleeping so well at night! He sleeps 10 hours Straight!!! The only downside to this is that he really needs about 11 hours sleep and usually won't go back to sleep once he finally wakes up. The outcome of this awkward transition to sleeping through the night is a non-napper who could really use a nap...) We read Peter Pan (of course) on our way north, and, fortunately, its a sizable book. Apparently we caught the broken train that only goes 5 miles per hour, until it finally gave up altogether and everyone switched trains. Yes, I'm still an adamant public transport whore. No, I wasn't happy :)

So we finally made to it the children's museum shortly before closing and had a lovely time. The water exhibit was wonderful, as was the bubble making section... but we almost didn't see any of it. P discovered a basket of hand puppets and was quite content to settle into the corner for an afternoon of role-playing with E and I. As we (more or less) went to Norwalk to Escape role-playing for one afternoon, we excitedly pointed out the window and gabbed greatly about the bubbles as a lure. Forever later (there was a cute squirrel puppet that P promised his heart to) we escaped to bubble land...

P has longed to be INside a bubble (preferably one floating up into the sky) ever since reading a book about this. One of the bubble contraptions could be raised around a child standing on a center platform. Oh gawd was P hooked on this station. YOu could see his concentration and excitement every time he achieved knee height with the bubble stretcher. Unfortunately, the wind was against him, breaking his bubble every time, and he never floated away...

He was equally transfixed by a nifty skeleton display. A child riding a stationary bike could look in a semi-reflective mirror at their image superimposed over a skeleton astride another bike. The movement of the child's pedals turned the skeleton's pedals too, bringing the bones to cycling life. There was a long line of pushy preschoolers at this station. P stood watching from the side, eventually sliding into line. A Very Excited boy started running circles around P, talking at him and touching him. This was Way too much for P :) and he practically begged the boy to scoot ahead of him in line, just to be rid of the kid's nervous energy. I felt a little bad for P since a couple of kids had already pushed their way in front of him, but his patience payed off. By the time he was front and center he had the display all to himself, giving it full concentration rather than stressing about jumpy kids in a line. A method to his unusually mellow madness :)

One of the things I hate most about leaving the city is the lack of good food :) Fire Island was lovely, the food, a disaster. Montauk, Sleepy Hollow, wherever we go we miss home come dinner time. Especially as vegetarians. But Barcelona saved South Norwalk, moving it to the "repeatable weekend" category. This tapas restaurant was Divine. It had all of P's favorites done to perfection, the hummus, the house cured olives, the mushrooms, the squash, the chocolate cake! And good beer to boot. As we huffed it to make our train home we were actually happy to be out of the city for dinner. Oh, and the kid's museum was ok too :)